RedShift has been focusing on developing speech recognition solutions for mobile food ordering applications supporting fast-food casual restaurants. A recent customer is Ziggi’s Coffee, which is reporting initial success with its voice-enabled ordering app for iOS (see image). Ziggi’s has evolved from a single coffee shop in Longmont, Colorado, founded by Brandon and Camrin Knudsen to a chain throughout the state, and is still growing. In announcing the app, Ziggi’s told customers that they not only strive to provide customers with “the friendliest service possible, but also the fastest, in order to help you get on with your busy day.”

Wally Griffin, CEO of RedShift Company, indicates that such apps are becoming a major trend for such outlets. Griffin said, “Including a voice option in a commercial app such as that for Ziggi’s Coffee is an important feature. In part the feature increases safety if an order is placed when driving or walking, and, of course, saves time by skipping the order line. But it is also as a message that the brand is ‘cool’—using modern conversational speech technology that is becoming increasingly part of the mobile user interaction.”

Digital ordering serves as the synapse between digital restaurant guests and digital restaurant operations, removing all friction from the ordering transaction itself. The resulting service model—food on-demand—means that restaurants can serve multiple guests in parallel (i.e. parallel processing), instead of serving one guest at a time (i.e. serial processing) in line at the counter or in line at the drive-thru speaker box. - See more at: http://blog.olo.com/2016/02/food-on-demand-online-ordering/#sthash.QdZcxRCE.dpuf

The Starbucks iOS app has been on a strong climb in capturing share of payment transactions for years, most recently reaching a fifth of all sales in August. But in just a few months, remote ordering surpassed in-store payment, reaching “almost two-thirds of the mobile payment mix” in the Pacific Northwest.

These results mirror studies showing that ordering is a foundational digital offering. The National Restaurant Association’s 2015 Technology Trends report revealed that 54% of respondents regularly use smartphones or tablets to order from a restaurant’s website or app versus just 26% who say they use their own devices to pay for meals. Guests have come to expect the ability to browse the menu and plan an order at their convenience, without the time and pressure crunches that can occur while ordering in-store.